Friday, October 15, 2010

Dogs and sheds. Or playhouses.

Man. Having a job is a real pain in the ass sometimes. Like when they expect you to do all this WORK in exchange for that paycheck they keep giving you. I mean, not that I don't work regularly, but some weeks the workload is more manageable than others. This has been one of those "other" weeks.

TGIF, is my point here. Torsten and I are thinking of driving to the mountains tomorrow, perhaps somewhere we haven't been before? We usually go to the Breckenridge area but perhaps tomorrow we'll head somewhere closer to Rocky Mountain National Park for a change of pace. The dog will come too, of course, and perhaps a not-too-strenuous hike will be in the works as well. Though I will say that when you're pregnant, most things become strenuous once you've hit 9,000 feet or so.

But the dog, the poor dog. Call it prep for when a newborn is here and we have no time or energy for her, but when work is so crazy we abandon all thoughts of taking her to the dog park and she has to settle for boring walks around the neighborhood instead. Not nearly as good for her, since she has to walk at our tedious pace instead of getting to sprint like a greyhound, as is her preference. Of course taking her to the mountains won't help with that situation, since we are the law-abiding (or giant-fine-averse) types who don't let her off-leash in prohibited areas, which is almost everywhere. But at least it will be an exciting new place with lots of interesting things to sniff, pee on, etc., right?

Anyway, she doesn't seem to mind too much. She creates her own entertainment, really:

Perhaps today I will join her out there instead of working.Doesn't it look peaceful?

That shed, also. Have I mentioned that shed? I call it a shed but really it's more of a playhouse, though it's made by TuffSheds and therefore I think was probably reasonably expensive. You can see the porch and the doors and one of the windows. It has more windows, too, and carpet on the inside. It's not really suitable for storing things, but why on earth would anyone buy a playhouse made by TuffShed? No?

Anyway, the shed/playhouse/whatever was here when we moved in, and neither of us likes it much. We don't use it for anything, and it's kind of big and ugly, and it takes up a chunk of the yard for no real reason. When we moved in we thought it would be nice to take that out of our yard so we could have more, you know, green space.

Then we looked at it closer. And saw that it has a steel frame. A proper shingled roof. And a concrete foundation. That thing is SOLID, is the point. If a tornado came by it might actually fare better than our actual house. (Let's hope we don't ever find out if that is true, shall we?) I seriously have no idea how in the hell we could possibly get it out of our yard. Unless we hired a professional with a crane to dispose of it. And even then, the foundation would probably still be in the yard. And our bank account would be even emptier than it already is. In other words, there's a reason that thing is still there. And I suspect it will be there for quite a few years to come.

(Also, now that Torsten's parents helped us pull out the stupid mini dog run fence that used to divide our yard into chunks, the shed/playhouse/structure/WHATEVER doesn't look quite as giant and dominating as it did before. So we both hate it a little less than we used to.)

In any case, I imagine Piglet will like it. His very own playhouse! What's not to like? And in the meantime, at least the dog is getting good use out of it.

Also, word to the wise about Rocky Mountain NP: most of the trails that go into the park don't allow dogs, even those trails that start well outside the park.

If you DO decide to go, though, the trail called Owl Mountain, on the north side of Estes Park, is absolutely beautiful.

You know a place that does allow dogs (check to make sure, and there's at least one trail that doesn't allow them)? Castlewood Canyon State Park, off to the southeast of Denver. It also has the advantage of not being high altitude and being mostly flattish.

I had a play house like that when I was little. We got it when our neighbors got a giant crane to remove it from their yard. My dad walked over and asked if the crane could just put it down in the yard across the street. We loved it!